Torchwood Fic: Every Time We Say Goodbye
by Marguerite1
Summary: Jack tells his team, as he locks the office door for the last time,that the hazard of doing your job incredibly well is that no one notices.


Title: Every Time We Say Goodbye  
Author: Marguerite  
Word count: 1815  
Rating: PG-13 to be on the safe side, suggestion of sex  
Characters: all, suggestion of Jack/Gwen  
Spoilers: all currently-aired episodes (up to 1.10). This will be  
rendered AU shortly, if my guess is right.  
Beta: christinekh, who is worth her weight in gold AND Ianto's coffee.  
Summary: Every time we say goodbye, I die a little. (Cole Porter)

The twenty-first century ticks along as usual, at least in the eyes of  
the billions of people who don't work for Torchwood.

Jack tells his team, as he locks the office door for the last time,  
that the hazard of doing your job incredibly well is that no one  
notices.

Torchwoods Two, Three, and Four - the "missing" Four had turned out to  
be a couple of rogue FBI agents freelancing across the United States -  
manage to outlive their own usefulness. They hoist the alien invasion  
on its own petard, technologically slick though it may be, thereby  
making Torchwood redundant. Competence can be a real bitch.

None of the others is completely sure where Jack ends up. Owen's  
theory is that Jack still lives at the remnant of the base, tossing  
raw hamburgers at Myfanwy. It's not as if he could send her to the  
RSPCA, after all. Toshiko thinks Jack might be traveling to someplace  
sunny after all his years in the darkness and the fog. Gwen agrees  
that he's traveling, but she hopes it's in time, with his old friends.

If Ianto knows Jack's whereabouts, he keeps that information to  
himself.

Toshiko takes up teaching neural computing at Cardiff University. Gwen  
rejoins the police force and works her way up to Deputy Inspector.  
Ianto, to no one's surprise, becomes a librarian.

There is one surprise. Out of the group, only Owen marries. At one of  
their impromptu get-togethers he tells them that he's marrying another  
doctor at St. David's Hospital. Everyone looks at Gwen. Rhys couldn't  
deal with the job in the end, and she's been alone ever since. Gwen  
splashes her drink on Owen, calls him a bastard, then throws her arms  
around him and wishes him all the best in the world.

A year later, she and Ianto are John Harper's godparents. As the  
minister blesses the dark-haired baby, Gwen thinks she sees Jack  
standing at the back of the church.

Gwen often thinks she sees Jack. Sometimes she can almost see him  
standing next to her desk, hands in his pockets, braces slipping down  
his shoulders. Every night she is so sure that he's sitting on the  
edge of her bed while she brushes her hair, so, so sure that she  
thinks she could catch a glimpse of him if only she could look into  
the mirror just the right way. He's close, she thinks every night for  
eight years, so close she can smell the wool-and-cognac scent of his  
gray coat.

Bollocks, she says to herself every night for eight years.

Ianto takes Owen's son camping some weekends, because Owen still hates  
the outdoors. John is an imp like his father, mercurial and energetic.  
He is a little afraid of Toshiko and her endless stream of questions  
about school, but he adores "Auntie" Gwen, never understanding why his  
mother doesn't feel the same way.

Auntie Gwen is the only one John can tell about The Man, the one who  
lives just beyond the boundaries of John's eyesight. You don't need to  
be afraid, she says. He's the good kind of man. Sometimes, she  
confesses to the solemn little boy, I see him too, and it makes me  
glad.

In the ninth year after the end of Torchwood, they suffer their first  
loss.

It is Ianto. No hero's death, he merely steps out into traffic at  
exactly the moment when a drunk driver squeals the wrong way down the  
street, and he's gone.

Gwen puts on black and brushes her hair. She picks up the  
wool-and-cognac scent again and shakes her head wistfully. It's not  
time for bed yet, Jack.

I know.

And it's him, voice and body and weary blue eyes with the weight of  
History in them. I had to come, Jack says. I had to say goodbye.

Come with me, Gwen offers, and they attend the service hand in hand.

Jack looks exactly the same. Tosh has lines around her eyes, Owen's  
hair is thinning, and Gwen isn't as lithe as she used to be, but Jack  
is Jack is Jack and he came to her.

Over drinks, afterwards, Jack confesses his secret to Toshiko and  
Owen. They linger over the concept of eternity, of forever, of Jack  
outlasting them all and still looking the way he does tonight, all  
cleft chin and strong shoulders that will always have to carry the  
burden of life. He'll always be here, watching them leave him one by  
one.

One by one they will leave him, and every time, he promises, he will  
come to say goodbye.

He doesn't have to make good on that promise for many years, until  
John Harper is a doctor himself and his father simply puts down his  
books one day and stops breathing. Jack steps up to the coffin, one  
arm linked through Tosh's and the other wrapped around Gwen's  
shoulders, as they look at the face that never looked that still or  
peaceful when Owen was alive. John Harper never gets a straight answer  
about this Captain Harkness, who can't be Dad's famous Captain  
Harkness because surely he was just a story.

John sees the Captain again three years later when they come to bury  
Toshiko. Her casket is closed, as Ianto's was, because she had been  
stricken by a form of leukemia that no one had ever seen. Gwen has it,  
too, and there is talk that the same disease carried off Owen as well  
as the old man from Torchwood Two and the Americans from Torchwood  
Four. Gwen, gray-haired and frail, is the only one left.

Gwen wears a hat with a veil and won't let Jack see her face, even  
when they are back in her own bedroom after the burial. Jack dries her  
tears with his immaculate linen handkerchief, trying to peek at her,  
but she keeps her head lowered. Why the subterfuge, he asks as he  
kneels at the foot of the bed and clasps her arthritic hands in his  
smooth, strong ones.

Because I'm a fright, and I'll never see you again. The next time you  
say goodbye, it'll be to me, but I won't know it, and I don't want you  
to remember me like this.

He pushes the hat off her head with two fingers, then lifts her chin  
so she has to look at him. She catches sight of herself in the mirror  
and groans, putting a mottled hand over her face.

Jack moves, sitting behind her on the bed and wrapping his arms around  
her waist. Now see what I see, he tells her. With his cheek against  
hers, he coaxes her to look into the mirror again.

Reflected with him, she is young and vibrant once more, dark hair  
spilling over her shoulders, her eyes wide and sparkling.

This is how I'll remember you. He leans over and brushes her neck with  
a feather-soft kiss. And this. If...if you want me. My Gwen.

Jack has loved her, then, all this time. He'll always love her. He'll  
always remember her smiling up at him with her hair scattered on the  
pillow, loving him with all the passion of her long-gone youth. What  
more could she hope for than the way Jack whispers her name?

My Gwen.

She hears him weeping just before dawn, as she falls into eternal  
sleep in his arms. Jack holds her and keens, mourning for lost time  
and the damnation of spending eternity without her.

My Gwen.

Two days later, flowers still fresh in the chapel from Tosh's funeral,  
Gwen watches Jack lean over her coffin. He looks old, God, he looks  
old, once you get beyond the beauty of his face and see his soul. His  
lips move.

My Gwen.

She can't feel Jack's tears falling on Old Gwen's face, for she is  
hovering just at his side, her iridescent fingers using the last of  
their corporeal strength to stroke his dark, mussed hair.

My Gwen.

She's going to see the rest of them soon. She can feel them gathering  
to greet her, just a few feet away, beckoning to her from where the  
light warms her and makes her whole again.

My Gwen.

John Harper puts his hand on Jack's shoulder. Dad said he knew a  
Captain Jack Harkness, who'd never get old and would never die. That's  
you, isn't it? You're real? You're going to live...

Forever. Without my Gwen.

Gwen can't stay in this world any longer. Owen and Tosh are beckoning  
her, and Ianto is waiting with fresh coffee. Coffee and almond  
biscotti, the way Gran always made for Christmas.

Goodbye, Jack, Gwen calls, although her voice is the merest suggestion  
of a whisper.

Jack and John turn. John's eyes are wide and fearful, but Jack's are  
alight with wonder. He knows. He was wrong. Something is waiting  
there, something that will be there for her, for them both, if only he  
can get to her.

Goodbye, Jack.

Jack is calling to her, hands outstretched. Tell Owen that John will  
help me. I'll find a way.

I know.

But in the meanwhile, they have to say goodbye.

END


End file.
